The Spy Gone North: The Partly True Story of “Black Venus”

Instead of a shoe phone, he has a StarTAC. It doesn’t sound impressive now, but in the mid-1990s, it was perfectly respectable—and would not attract undue attention. The man code-named “Black Venus” is known here as Park Seok-young, but many details about his life and mission have been changed in this real-life le Carré-esque tale of espionage, based in part on the deep-cover operative’s notes. North-South relations are murkier than ever in Yoon Jong-bin’s The Spy Gone North (trailer here), which opens this Friday in Los Angeles (next Friday in New York).

Park is a true patriot, who sacrifices a promising career in military intelligence for this long-term mission. After establishing a history of alcoholism and debt, Park turns up in Beijing, posing as a dodgy businessman looking to import profitable North Korean goods via China. However, his real goal is too gain access to North Korea’s nuclear facilities in Yongbyon.

It will take a lot of trust-building just to be invited into the notoriously closed pariah state. The plan is to cultivate Ri Myung-woon, Kim Jong-il’s western-educated finance guru, who is primarily tasked with acquiring as much hard currency as he can for the cash-strapped regime. The affable quickly forges a rapport with the more reserved Ri, but Jung Moo-taek, the state security liaison is openly suspicious (and hostile).

Nevertheless, Park manages to sell first Ri and then Big Brother himself on a sketchy joint venture to produce commercials in the North to appeal to South Koreans’ nostalgia and desire for unification. It is quite a coup for Park, but it is all jeopardized when his handler, NIS Director Choi Hak-sung changes the mission parameters mid-stream. Suddenly, Park is also supposed to act as a go-between brokering a Wag the Dog incident to benefit the hawkish ruling party in the South.

Ideologically, Spy Gone South has a cargo-tanker full of baggage to unpack. On one hand, there is a clear suggestion of Machiavellian moral equivalency between North and South. Yet, it also unambiguously addresses the famine ravaging the People’s Republic during the nineties. It also makes it clear anyone who disappointed the Kim Dynastic regime would be purged and condemned to a prison camp, along with their entire families. In fact, Kim the Second is portrayed on-screen—very much as a wacked-out, unstable, odd duck. It is therefore hard to imagine this film getting much of a reception up North, despite its clearly dovish, pro-unification sympathies.

Regardless, on a more basic, formalistic level, Spy Gone North serves as quite a tight, tense espionage thriller, fully stocked with close calls and mounting paranoia. Hwang Jung-min is perfectly cast as the unctuous-on-the-outside, tense-to-the-breaking-point-inside Park, if that is indeed his name. He can radiate a sense of danger like nobody else acting in film today—and as Black Venus, he cranks it up to eleven.

Yet, we expect that from Hwang. The real surprise is the depth and uncertainty Lee Sung-min brings to the film as Ri,0 in what might be his career best work. Plus, Ki Joo-bong is so jaw-droppingly amazing as Kim Jong-il, we literally fear for his safety. Park Sung-woong, one of our favorite actors working today (especially in morally ambiguous roles) is weirdly under-utilized as Park’s oblivious South Korean partner in the advertising venture, but just having him on-board is reassuring.

There is a great deal of complicated intrigue that unfolds during the film, but even though Yoon never skimps on the Smiley spycraft details, he still keeps the pacing snappy. The takeaway is rather muddled, but it is just a lot of fun to watch the big name cast sneak around, conspiring against each other. Highly recommended, The Spy Gone South opens this Friday (8/10) at the Los Angeles and Buena Park CGV Cinemas (and next Friday in New York, at the AMC Empire).

The Battleship Island: War Crimes at the UNESCO Heritage Site

Hashima Island off Nagasaki was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, despite the fact slave labor was used and abused there. Of course, that totally fits with how the UN does business. It was a grim place for workers, but even worse for the enslaved comfort women. The war is nearly over, but the atrocities will get even worse in Ryoo Seung-wan’s The Battleship Island (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Although small in total land surface, Hashima was an imposing concrete rock jutting out of the Pacific, featuring a punishing coal mine that bored deep into the Earth. Nobody would volunteer to “work” there, but plenty of Koreans, as well as some Chinese and Southeast Asian prisoners were either remanded there or press-ganged off the docks of Nagasaki. That is what happens to swing band-leader Lee Kang-ok, his musicians, and his young daughter So-hee. Fortunately, he largely manages to avoid the mines by performing for the Japanese. He also secures house-cleaning work for So-hee rather than comfort woman duties, but the way perverted senior Japanese officials look at her represents a constant danger.

The good news is the war is going badly for Japan and is likely to end soon. The bad news is the military and mining company officials will want to eliminate all evidence of war crimes, most definitely including the victims. Park Moo-young might be able to help. The OSS-trained Korean independence fighter originally infiltrated the island intending to rescue Yoon Hak-cheol, a well-respected resistance leader, but that mission was complicated by unforeseen developments.

At one hundred-thirty-two minutes, Battleship does not scrimp on suffering and misery. It makes it painfully clear what slave labor entailed during the militarist Showa era. It is not pretty. However, Ryoo also stages a spectacular, island-shaking, massive-in-scale escape-revolt that stands up to any of the celebrated scenes in Saving Private Ryan, Braveheart, or Heaven help us, Titanic. Still, it takes too long to get to there and the constant presence of So-hee is a buzz-kill. Don’t misunderstand, Kim Soo-ahn is very good in the part—perhaps too good. She is just so young and innocent-looking, it is exhausting in a not-so-fun kind of way to be constantly worrying about her.

Oddly, Hwang Jung-min, who ordinarily swaggers he way through films, is uncharacteristically whiny and churlish as Lee, the swinging scrounger. Instead, it is So Ji-sub who delivers the hardnosed in-your-face attitude as Choi Chil-sung, a gangster who turns rebel after getting shanghaied to Hashima. Plus, the ever-reliable Lee Kyoung-young do his thing as the crafty Yoon, as usual.

This is a huge period production built around oppressively imposing concrete and steel sets and locations. It is easy to understand how Hashima beat down prisoners/laborers as soon as the set foot on the island. Still, it would not have killed anyone, if Ryoo had scored a few less points against the Japanese by tightening up the first and second acts. Nevertheless, anyone in the mood to follow-up Dunkirk with another high-body-count war epic should find Ryoo’s latest fits the bill (but Operation Chromite and My Way are even better). Recommended for fans of Korean historical tragedies, Battleship Island opens this Friday (8/4) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Asura: The City of Madness—Hwang Jung-min Unleashes his Inner Mayor Daley

In the U.S., they say there is even more corruption on the local governmental level than the Federal, because that is where all land use decisions are made. The same seems to be true in Korean—and Mayor Park Sung-bae is glad of it. He is determined to get all the prime cuts from a plan to redevelopment a former U.S. military base in fictional Annam. Of course, he has plenty of other nefarious side businesses, including a large meth dealing operation. For years, Det. Han Do-kyung has done the mayor’s dirty work, but an ambitious prosecutor will force him to either double down or turn state’s evidence in Kim Sung-soo’s spectacularly cynical Asura: The City of Madness (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

In his world-weary voice-overs, Han refers to himself as the mayor’s “gun-dog.” He means it the way it sounds. Having done some pretty despicable things for his boss (who also happens to be his cancer-stricken wife’s half-brother), Han is poised to accept a position in City Hall as his reward. Unfortunately, things fall apart rapidly when an equally venal but less connected fellow cop interrupts him paying off the junkie who recently kidnapped a witness against the mayor. During the resulting scuffle, Han accidentally kills the crooked copper, forcing him to frame his drug-addled lackey to save himself.

To further complicate Han’s life, prosecutor Kim Cha-in starts blackmailing Han to inform on Park. Facing his wife’s impending mortality has made Han remorseful for choosing the crooked path. However, he can tell Kim is no Fritz Bauer or Rudy Giuliani. In fact, he might be just as ruthless and sociopathic as Park.

Asura (rather poetically named after constantly warring Buddhist demigods) makes recent Korean political corruption thrillers like Inside Men and A Violent Prosecutor look like The Smurfs. No mere ward-heeler, Mayor Park is practically the Devil incarnate. Of course, the flamboyantly devious pol is totally in Hwang Jung-min’s wheelhouse. He gleefully gobbles down the scenery and delivers insanely villainous pronouncements like Mussolini on the balcony. In contrast, Jung Woo-sung is relatively restrained, but watching the cumulative punishment of all the smack-downs he endures also represents quite a compelling performance, but one of a wholly different order.

Amidst this world of shady characters, Kwak Do-won also stands out as the cold-blooded Kim Cha-in. If you are looking for subtlety here, your best bet is Jeong Man-sik, who brings some finer gradations to Do Chang-hak, Kim’s lead investigator, at least when he is not beating on poor, degraded Det. Han.

Tight, tense, and bracing like iced black coffee, Asura could be the least sentimental film of the year. Kim Sung-soo never gives viewers anyplace to hide, but he pays them off with third act mayhem worthy of Johnnie To at the top of his game. Very highly recommended for action and procedural fans, Asura: The City of Madness opens today (10/14) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

NYAFF ’16: A Violent Prosecutor

When prosecuting a case, Byun Jae-wook bangs on the facts when the facts are on his side and he bangs on the law when the law is on his side. When he gets stuck, he bangs on heads, making him all too vulnerable for a nasty frame-up job in director-screenwriter Lee Il-hyeong’s A Violent Prosecutor (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 New York Asian Film Festival.

It all started when a politically connected and mobbed-up (is there really any difference?) development company sends a pack of provocateurs to crash an environmental protest. In the ensuing melee, a police officer is badly hurt. That was not necessarily part of the plan, but it turns public opinion on a dime. Byun smells a rat, so he does his best to intimidate an asthmatic suspect into confessing. The lowlife idiot was fine when he left him, but he is inconveniently dead when Byun returns in the morning, with nary an inhaler in sight.

The massively corrupt former deputy chief prosecutor-turned congressional candidate Woo Jong-il completes the frame-up by disposing of the inhaler and conning Byun into a guilty plea. Byun will spend the next five years behind bars, but he will have plenty of time to work on his case. There is only so much Byun can do from his cell, but pretty boy con artist Han Chi-won will reluctantly serve as his proxy in exchange for successfully masterminding his appeal.

VP is another monster box-office hit for Hwang Jung-min, making him one of the most bankable stars in the world. It is also immediately reassuring to see him strut into a picture. He is constitutionally incapable of being dull, perhaps because even when he plays good guys, there is always something slightly off about him. Prosecutor Byun is a perfect case in point.

Although Gang Dong-won got most of the press for his lightweight Axel Foley act, it is the old pros who really shore up VP. Frequent heavy Park Sung-woong (terrific in For the Emperor) adds rich layers of nuance and uncertainty as Yang Min-woo, the ambitious prosecutor tempted to do the right thing. Likewise, Lee Sung-min raises calculated clamminess to an art form as the villainous Woo.

VP starts somewhat slowly and it is more than a little heavy handed, but the second and third acts are deliciously entertaining. Lee pulls off one reversal after another, steadily raising the stakes which each deal. The results are fun and cathartic. Recommended for fans of “wrong man” thrillers, A Violent Prosecutor screens tomorrow (7/8) at the SVA Theatre, as part of this year’s NYAFF.